From there, more chances for a mis-step. Mary Evenshirer married Stephen C Duryea (1814-1887), a brother of George Duryea, and 28 years her senior. He was a step-uncle, if such a relation exists.

Letty Jane Duryea, the half-sister of Mary Evenshirer, married Alfred DeCiplet Eyre (1848-1912) in New York City in 1868. Letty died in Jersey City in 1889. In 1890, Mary Evenshirer, then widowed, remarried to Alfred Eyre, her half-sister's widower.

The DNA Circle formed because a cluster of three people surfaced at Ancestry with Mary Eyre or Mary Duryea in their trees. Their trees did not extend back into the Brewer and Duryea lines, hence no shaky leaf designation that we share a common ancestor. But somehow the threshold was met for a DNA Circle.

The common ancestor with this group of three people would not be Mary Evenshirer. They descend from Mary's half-sister, Letty Jane Duryea, wife of Alfred DeCiplet Eyre. The common ancestors would be Mary and Letty's mother, Rene Brewer AND from the other line, Garrett S Duryea (1777-1834) and Ann Cornell (1789-1871), the parents of Stephen C Duryea and George W Duryea.

Ancestry picked up on a common relation among the five of us, but chose the wrong common ancestor. The actual family tree is tricky, as I outlined above. Ancestry DNA Circles does not replace researching the family tree.